Cup Category

By David Morgan, NASCAR Editor Each week NASCAR Editor David Morgan will break down who’s hot and who’s not after the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series race weekend. Today, we break down the Bank of America 500 at Charlotte Motor Speedway. WINNERS Martin Truex, Jr. – The wins just keep on coming for Truex and Furniture Row Racing. 2017 has been a career year for the No. 78 team and Truex added another victory to the win column on Sunday at Charlotte. Truex may not have had the best qualifyingRead More

By David Morgan, NASCAR Editor Don’t count Dale Earnhardt, Jr. as a fan of the traction compound that was used during Sunday’s Bank of America 500 at Charlotte. The compound, which has been used with mixed results at Speedway Motorsports, Inc. tracks this season, was laid down in the second and third grooves at Charlotte, but things didn’t quite gel between the cars on track and the ability for the compound to increase grip. Trouble with the PJ1 compound started on Friday in practice when a handful of drivers, includingRead More

By Reid Spencer, NASCAR Wire Service CONCORD, N.C. – The only thing typical about Martin Truex Jr.’s performance at Charlotte Motor Speedway was the win. The No. 78 Furniture Row Racing team screwed up in qualifying on Friday—a rare occurrence in a remarkable season for the series leader. Truex failed to score points in the first stage of Sunday’s Bank of America 500, the first race in the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series Playoff’s Round of 12. That marked the first time since Daytona in July that Truex had finished outsideRead More

By David Morgan, NASCAR Editor After two finishes outside the top-15 to finish out the first round of the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series Playoffs, Kevin Harvick turned things around as the second round started at Charlotte by winning two stages, leading the most laps, and finishing third in Sunday’s Bank of America 500. Harvick kicked the weekend off with a strong qualifying effort to start the race in third place and he was able to find the lead for the first time just 52 laps in. He would thenRead More

By David Morgan, NASCAR Editor Entering Charlotte Motor Speedway as one of the favorites to move on in the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series Playoffs, the path forward for Kyle Busch isn’t looking quite as certain after several encounters with the wall that left him with a 29th place finish and took a big bite out of his points advantage over the cut-off line. “It stinks to give up points,” said Busch. “We came in here and thought we had a good shot to run in the top-10 and weRead More

By David Morgan, NASCAR Editor The Fall race at Charlotte Motor Speedway is often overshadowed by the Coca-Cola 600 and the All-Star Race, but there have been a few occasions when the second race date at the track provides a memorable finish. The 1972 National 500 was one of those races. David Pearson would put his Wood Brothers Mercury on the pole, with Buddy Baker joining him on the front row. In what would be the final race that the Wood Brothers entered two cars, A.J. Foyt qualified third, followedRead More

By David Morgan, NASCAR Editor With the first round of the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series Playoffs complete after last weekend’s race at Dover, NASCAR’s premier division heads home to Charlotte Motor Speedway this weekend to kick off the Round of 12 with Sunday’s running of the Bank of America 500. As the first race in the Round of 12, Charlotte will play a big role in setting up how the remainder of the round will play out at Talladega and Kansas in the next two weeks. The 1.5-mile quad-ovalRead More

By David Morgan, NASCAR Editor Each week NASCAR Editor David Morgan will break down who’s hot and who’s not after the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series race weekend. Today, we break down the Apache Warrior 400 at Dover International Speedway. WINNERS Kyle Busch – Since breaking through for his first win of the season at Pocono in late July, Kyle Busch has been on fire, winning four of the last nine races, including two in a row between last week at New Hampshire and Sunday at Dover. Though Sunday’s winRead More

By Reid Spencer, NASCAR Wire Service DOVER, Del. – Call him the Grinch. Halloween may be the next holiday on the calendar, but Kyle Busch stole Christmas morning from Chase Elliott late on Sunday afternoon at Dover International Speedway. Running Elliott down from more than four seconds back in the last 40 laps of the Apache Warrior 400 at the Monster Mile, Busch powered his No. 18 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota around the outside of Elliott’s No. 24 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet and cleared him off Turn 4 as the carsRead More

By David Morgan, NASCAR Editor The 2017 season has not gone the way that Dale Earnhardt, Jr. or his No. 88 Hendrick Motorsports team planned for it to go, but in his final race at Dover on Sunday, Earnhardt showed the kind of speed that he has been lacking for the majority of the season and came away with a seventh-place finish. Not only was it Earnhardt’s best finish at Dover since the fall race in 2015, but it also his first top-10 finish since Sonoma back in June. “ItRead More